Real enough: A virtual classroom can induce an increase in anxiety and speech disfluencies in adolescents

Virtual reality (VR) enables the user to navigate and interact in real time with computer-generated 3D environments. There is an increasing interest in using virtual environments to study psychological phenomena such as anxiety (Wiederhold & Bouchard, 2014). In this study, we assess the feasibility of a virtual classroom to evoke anxiety and speech disfluencies in adolescents.
Twenty adolescents who do not stutter or suffer from social anxiety disorder, were asked to talk for approximately four minutes in front of the examiner, in a virtual classroom and in a VR neutral environment. They repeatedly rated their level of anxiety while speaking. Our results show an increase in speech disfluencies when speaking in front of a virtual classroom compared with speaking to the examiner. Moreover, we observed higher levels of anxiety when speaking in a virtual classroom than when speaking in an empty apartment.
These preliminary results underline the capacity of a virtual classroom to induce anxiety and speech disfluencies in youth. These results, alongside previous research into adults (Brundage & Hancock, 2015; Brundage et al., 2006, 2016), are encouraging for the clinical use of VR environments to assess and treat anxiety and speech disfluencies in people who stutter.